We consider the problem of traffic management in small networks with both
wireless and wired devices, connected to the Internet through a single gateway.
Examples of such networks are small office networks or residential networks,
where typically traffic management is limited to flow prioritization through
port-based filtering. We propose a practical resource allocation framework that
provides simple mechanisms to applications and users to enable traffic management
functionality currently not present due to the distributed nature of the system
and various technology or protocol limitations. To allow for control irrespective
of whether traffic flows cross wireless, wired or even broadband links, the
proposed framework jointly optimizes rate allocations across wireless and wired
devices in a weighted fair manner. Additionally, we propose a model for
estimating the achievable capacity regions in wireless networks to overcome the
absence of the queue information. This model is used by the controller to achieve
a specific rate allocation. We evaluate a decentralized, host-based
implementation of the proposed framework. The controller is incrementally
deployable by not requiring modifications to existing network protocols and
equipment or the wireless MAC. Using analytical methods and experimental results
with realistic traffic, we show that our controller is stable with fast
convergence for both UDP and TCP traffic, achieves weighted fairness, and
mitigates scheduling inefficiencies of the existing hardware.